Inside Unmanned Systems

APR-MAY 2018

Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.

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63 April/May 2018 unmanned systems
inside
isting rules, Rappsilber said. "Imagine you
have a very dense city with many houses, cars
and streets," he said. "You don't have any space
to f ly safely, and when you are there with a he-
licopter you are not allowed to be in a holding
position because you have no space to do au-
torotation landings.
"With normal drones, if there is a failure, they
will fall to earth like a stone, but we can operate
because of our high safety factor." Thanks to its
double-hull design and low payload weight, if
the ALtAIR is damaged, for example if some-
body shoots a hole in it, it will take half an hour
to an hour to actually sink to the ground. "It's
more like a toy," Rappsilber said, "it's like a big
balloon, it's an extremely safe product."
A startup project within Airbus Defence
& Space, ALtAIR achieved f light just seven
months after the first ideas were put on paper,
Rappsilber said.
REAL-TIME MONITORING
Occupying a stand just next to Airbus was
Ottawa-based Kongsberg Geospatial. We spoke
to Capture Manager & Technical Solutions
Specialist Colin Willey, who explained one of
his company's key offerings.
We have a baseline geospatial and digital
map capability that is integrated in all our par-
ent company Kongsberg Gruppen products
in the defense market in and around Norway.
That's called our TerraLens Core. But we also
build application layers using the same technol-
ogy for other customers, and that's a product we
call IRIS."
IRIS is a drone-centric, command and con-
trol system, with ground station capability that
monitors drones in real time. "This allows you
to look at your drones along a f light path and
see how they interact with the environment—
other aircraft, no-go zones, terrain. So we sell
this to drone manufacturers, to people who are
using drones, to security, to military. Anybody
who has a need to view their drones in real-time
can use it."
Willey said typical clients include anyone
who needs to get a camera on a situation and
make real-time decisions. "Similar to what
Airbus is doing right over there, our
clients can be people who are monitor-
ing crowds and special-event scenarios,
football games or even G20 summits,
with video cameras and real-time VIP
dignitary monitoring. It can be people
delivering medical supplies to remote
areas, pipeline monitoring service pro-
viders, search and rescue for sure. It's
especially useful when you might need
to get a drone up quickly, without time
to set a f light path. With IRIS you see
the drone with the terrain and all envi-
ronment elements in detail, as you f ly."
Current partners, Willey said, in-
clude the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, Norwegian utilities compa-
nies, and even a pizza delivery service.
"We've got a pilot project right now
with a company called Flirty, out of
Reno, Nevada. They are working with
Domino's to test the effectiveness of
using drones to deliver pizzas," he said.
"They are really looking at the whole
process of getting the pizza into the
drone, finding a path to take, the ob-
stacles, finding out where to land. You need to
have exceptional maps to be able to do this."
Anyone hungry?
DRONES CRASH THE PARTY IN MUNICH
Hovering over crowds, delivering goods in ur-
ban environments or speeding to save some-
one's life with medical supplies, all of these ac-
tivities imply a set of rules on how and where
one can f ly.
Speaking on just that subject at the Munich
Satellite Navigation Summit, an event that was
going on just down the road from Nuremberg
(apparently, one drone event at a time is not
enough for the German federal state of Bavaria),
was Dominic Hayes, manager of Galileo and
"IT'S NOT JUST A JAMMER.
IT'S A PORTABLE, COUNTER-
UAV SYSTEM, EQUIPPED
WITH A JAMMER BUT ALSO
A RECEIVING PART. IT
HAS AN RF DETECTOR FOR
PICKING UP THE DRONE
SIGNAL, EITHER THE REMOTE
CONTROL OR THE VIDEO
DOWNLINK. IT GIVES OUT AN
ALERT, SO IT VIBRATES, AND
WE GET SOME INFORMATION
VIA HEADPHONES. THEN
YOU CAN SWITCH ON THE
JAMMER."
Johannes Petz
Sales Director for Hensholdt